John Dunn

History, eternal, always

Thursday, 2 February 2023 at 21:07

My thinking: never the same river twice

History, eternal, always

History for me is concrete and eternal.

Time is for me the living movement of my thinking mind.

History abstracted from the living movement of my thinking has no value to me.

All history belongs to me as I am thinking. It cannot be grasped in any thought frozen in isolation.

The choice, order and disposition of the raw facts are the process of my thinking.

Facts and ordering are two terms in the living movement of my thinking, rather than petrified thoughts external to my thinking.

The facts of history, standing as isolated abstractions, have no being. They can only be the living movement of my thinking, which is not in my past, nor in my present which will be past, since it is the life, the very reality of my mind, the centre from which all time radiates, whether it be past or future.

History is only concrete in the eternal act of my thinking.

© John Dunn.

Following the old road

Wednesday, 1 February 2023 at 20:53

The old turnpike in Denton's pre-bypass days c.1920s

Following the old road

Northampton and Cold Brayfield Turnpike (1827 to 1880), today's A428

The final version of the commentary I have made about this old road is now available on my blog site Iter Britanniarum.

I propose to produce a YouTube video about the turnpike, dwelling a little on the elements of the original 1827 turnpike route which are very likely to be overlooked by travellers today.

I suppose the underlying objective is to show that, more often than not, an old road is shot thought with history, making each and every journey as archaeological as you might want to make it.

The Northampton and Cold Brayfield turnpike road starts in Derngate in central Northampton, follows an unclassified road to the town’s inner ring road, then today’s A428 Bedford Road through Yardley Hastings to end at the junction with the B565 from Newort Pagnell 1/4 mile west of Cold Brayfield. Exceptions to this route are at Little Houghton, Denton and Yardley Hastings, all in Northamptonshire, where the A428 now bypasses the villages but the turnpike road went through them.

© John Dunn.